Daydreaming of the apocalypse

Well, this is a little different than daydreaming of the apocalypse (which will be a terrifying day). But I do often daydream about what it would be like if disaster (or terrorism) struck and our entire American way of doing life was annihilated. Just think… you may own your house, but you don’t make your own electricity or have your own water source. You may cook your own food, but you don’t know how to grow it, or even know what’s in season. You may sew your own clothes, but you don’t know how to make your own cotton fabric, or know how to get wool from a sheep’s hide to socks on your feet.

Joshua was telling me yesterday about a house being built here in Asheville that is “off the grid”—meaning, they are actually harnessing their own electricity (using solar panels) and selling what they don’t use back to the electric company for a profit. They collect their own water, harvest their own shiitake mushrooms (did you know that you actually have to drill holes in a log and insert the fungus?), and get rid of their waste with a septic system that turns everything into ash and pumps it back out into the earth as fertilizer. The house is so well-insulated (with hemp and clay from the site) that there is no need for a heater or for AC and the insulation ratings are double what are required for the standard American home. Apparently you can tour the place for $15 and Joshua and I are thinking about doing that one Saturday. This kind of green, self-sustaining building holds infinite interest for Joshua, and the self-reliant homestead holds equal interest for me.    

I daydream about growing my own food and making my own butter and cheese, raising my own livestock and learning to make textiles. I find it a bit frightening that if the electric companies suddenly all shut their doors, many people in this country wouldn’t even know how to go about obtaining food after the supermarket aisles ran dry. In our age of technological advancement (which is honestly nothing short of amazing and in a way reminds me of Babel), we have abandoned the art of self-reliance. We are dependent upon our system of food and materials production, which, by the way, has not offered us a guarantee of not petering out at some point.

I want to learn how to weave a basket, hand-dip a candle, milk a cow, churn my own butter, work a loom, eat in season, collect herbs and make medicinal tinctures, cook on a woodstove… the list is almost endless. Lucky for me, I live in possibly the absolute perfect city to learn the art of self-sustainable living.

The beautiful part of it is, learning the art of making things yourself does not exclude the need for community. There is no way one person could run a homestead. Someone works with textiles, someone works the land, someone works with livestock. It is a beautiful patchwork of reliance upon one another and appreciation of skill and labor instead of dependence upon an isolating, money-driven system. Sign me up for class.